I remember when I was growing up in the 70’s, a frequent gag in comic strips like Beetle Bailey and Blondie was a character being in some bizarre or surrealistic situation, then the last panel would be them waking up and saying “I need to stop eating pepperoni pizza before bed” or something similar. I think the implication was that the spicy pepperoni caused the character nightmares. I haven’t heard this reference since I was a kid, and in a quick poll of about a dozen 20-somethings at work, not one of them has heard of it. I don’t think any but the most sensitive stomachs would think of pepperoni as spicy (I know a couple people that can’t even eat tomato sauce).
So I have some questions about this:
Did people really consider a pepperoni pizza “spicy”? Was food a lot blander back then? Sure a lot of foods that are considered common now were rare or unheard of but was Mexican food and other cuisines containing hot peppers pretty rare back in the day?
I guess waking up in the night from indigestion would be understandable, and pepperoni pizza could cause it if you were used to much blander food, but nightmares? Can indigestion actually cause nightmares?
Particularly if “back then” refers to the 1950s and 1960s…yes, American food was a lot blander. “Ethnic” food often referred to such exotic dishes as spaghetti, pizza, or chop suey, and black pepper was often the strongest spice that the American housewife used.
James Lileks has an outstanding (and, frankly, kind of frightening) collection of cookbooks from that era, and you can see just how bland (and heavy) a lot of the dishes were: The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Lots of nasty Jell-O molds, lots of roasts, lots of very plain dishes.
This 20-something has often heard comments about bad or weird dreams being caused by pepperoni, kielbasa, bleu cheese, or any number of other food items. Plus, who doesn’t remember the bit in A Christmas Carol? “You’re just a bit of undigested beef or undercooked potato.”
When I was a kid (about 50 years ago), the thing you weren’t supposed to eat just before bed was pickles. I didn’t make the connection with indigestion at first, however – I guess I thought they had some magic psychoactive property.
Yes, indigestion can affect your dreams, just like any other physical discomfort.
With pepperoni pizza, I would think the greasiness would contribute more than the spiciness, but yeah, up through maybe the mid-60s in the US, pepperoni pizza was considered pretty spicy.
Yes, that’s the impression I had (that food was very bland in the 50’s and 60’s compared to today), but I wasn’t sure. Thanks for that link, it’s hilarious! The gelatin encased food in particular, did people really do that? Ewwww!:dubious:
But the use for a repeatedly used aspect of fiction dates much later. Even today, most dictionaries still only have the “figure of speech” and “medieval musical embellishment” definitions.
“Mama mia! That’s some spicy meatza ballza!”, because of the inclusion of a bit of garlic. People used to consider bell peppers pretty spicy, too, especially the seeds. I’ve never noticed any heat in a bell pepper, whether it was green or ripe, and I WOULD notice it.
In those days, salt and fat was used in what we’d consider to be outrageous amounts. Food trends change. Nowadays you have to carefully examine the product labels to see if high fructose corn syrup has been added to a food. And the answer is probably yes, unless the label proudly proclaims the absence of HFCS.
The bestest example of this trope is the Cosby episode where Bill eats a sausage hoagie before bed and has nightmares…that include a sausage hoagie made by Jim Henson. Other muppets too.